| The Sketch That Taught Its Artist
He was an artist, and could have been a very talented one. His sketchbooks were full of original ideas, ideas that no other person would have created. There were people on many of the pages. They were the most beautiful people that could have been sketched. Their muscles and limbs were perfectly sized and proportioned. To look upon one of these people made the observer want to better his or her life. This was the effect he had on people, and he needed no model for it. On other pages were people who did model for him. They were not in model poses, however, and they often modeled for him without knowing it. They were the distressed young college students in the coffee shop staring out of the foggy window when they should have been studying. They were the grandmother with her grandchildren in the supermarket buying cookies when the original purpose for being there was to get spaghetti sauce. These were beautiful in a different sense, in the sense that photographers capture beauty on the street. Other pages held landscapes, but he did not dare take his landscapes from his physical eye. He would only smudge his vision of the reality of nature. He instead created his own. They were fantastic paradises, futuristic wastelands and cities, places that would either cause immense fascination or plain disgust for any observer. Several of the pages were filled with animals, but not the simple deer or dog. The animals were extraordinary. He made them up, pulled them from myth, or used a real animal of amazing sight. There were tigers leaping upon their prey, octopi strangling their enemies, and dragons fighting brave knights who in fact had no chance at victory.
He was an artist, and he was distressed. When life had given him nothing, he had given life his effort. He had gone to school to learn the ways an artist should work. He had studied philosophy to learn the avenues into which his thoughts could travel, and develop his own. He knew how to amaze people, and he worked so hard to do so. At the same time, when he amazed people, it was an effect that lasted only as long as the passerby would look. Today, people were simply so busy that they would not spare a second glance or a few dollars for a painting. He offered to paint people, but nobody would be able to sit for a few minutes while he sketched out a quick caricature or some other portrayal. He was out of a job and out of money, and only had his sketchbooks and some pencils.
I found him after a few days of starving himself, trying desperately to sell his work for a few bucks, with which he intended to buy a meager helping of dinner for the week. He was unshaven, naturally, and had not slept in several days. He sponged himself by a river, so that he was at least somewhat presentable, and did not dirty his clothes because he only had so many. He was sitting on the sidewalk in front of a grocery store, smiling gaily, but it only horrified the people because it is not natural for such a sad man to smile. It simply looks wrong.
I asked him if I could see some of his work. I’d by then spent time in Europe looking at some of the world’s greatest masterpieces. He was happy to let me view his paintings and sketches that were for sale. I was impressed, and I admitted to him that they were beautiful. I inquired about their prices, and I watched his eyes shift back on forth. Here I was, the first person to be enthusiastic about his art, it seemed, for he was ecstatic to hear my compliment. I know he had a price, and I know his eyes meant he was inflating the price, or thinking of ways he could get me to buy more. I had a good enough amount of money, and any extra that I gave him that was not included in the original price I decided could count as charity, which I did not mind giving. He gave me his price, which was actually more reasonable than I was expecting to hear, and bought several pieces that I thought might make my apartment look appealing. They’re still hanging on my walls, and my guests enjoy them.
I asked the artist if I might see his sketchbook. He had been sketching when I had walked up, and I was curious as to what his ideas beheld. I had not met any great artist in my time, at least before this one, and I never actually learned his name. I looked at the sketchbook he had currently been working on, examining the experimentation and ideas inside. I was not impressed, but amazed, disgusted, and scared. He had such a boiling over of ideas on every page that I had a headache trying to decipher everything he had put into it, trying to make it something reasonable in my mind. He smiled, and I felt it burning the top of my head as I looked down at the pages. I enjoyed this. It evoked me more than I imagine anything had up until that point.
“They’re a bit difficult,” he admitted, “even for me. Try these.” He handed me a few sketchbooks that looked quite a bit older. With some relief and some reluctance, I closed the first and handed it back to him, and opened the sketchbook of the grayest shade in its black cover. I was instantly pulled into its pages. Here was beauty and horror and greatness separated, not jumbled together as with the newer book that I had just given up. Then, I closed it and opened the next, and then the next, and the next. After a few sketchbooks, I asked once more for the first one I had looked at. Suddenly, these sketches had meaning.
I could see the individual people in them, the animals, the landscapes, the ideas. I noticed something odd, however, about the sketches as opposed to his earlier ones. The people were beautiful drawn, but had no faces. They had heads and hair, but their faces were void of eyes, noses, mouths, cheekbones, and structure in general. Where there should have been a face, there was only visibly flat paper. “Why do they have no faces?” I asked.
“Because they can’t hurt me if they have no faces,” he replied. “They have no character, no glances, no words, and they therefore cannot taunt me. I’ve failed, sir, but I’ve also succeeded. I look at you now, but do you know what I see? Only skin. Do you know what I hear as you speak to me? Only words. There are no ideas, no judgment there. I recognize it physically, and I respond accordingly, but it only runs so deep. In my drawings, I saw people, and I saw what made them. I saw how they were created by their faces. I am hungry, sir, and I know that. But at least I have to suffer only my own judgment. Let’s just say that I am not suffering as most others in my position might.”
“I’m not going to pretend to understand.”
“You will,” the artist said. “You’ll understand one day, when you realize that you’ve worked too hard your entire life to impress everybody else but yourself. You can have the older sketchbooks if you’d like. I wasn’t going to sell them because, at first, they were beyond worth. Now, I keep them closed because they have words. They have faces. I can hear them even when they are closed, and it’s frustrating. I’ll sell them to you for a good price, the whole lot of them.”
“I’ll take them gladly,” I said, and thought for a moment. “Perhaps I’ll hear them, too.”
“I hope you don’t,” the artist replied quickly.
“How come?” I asked, handing over the money in exchange for the many books.
“They’ll only remind you of things you don’t want to be reminded of.”
“Oh.” I turned to walk away with my paintings and sketchbooks, and then stopped. I did not turn back to see him. I knew he was watching me, waiting for me to ask one more question, and he knew what it was. But I was stubborn, and would not give him the satisfaction of seeing my curiosity.
“I told you I see no face, and hear no judgment,” he pointed out, so I turned around. He was smiling, though, because although he did not feel anybody else any more, he at least knew.
“I will hear them, won’t I?”
“I suspect you will.” |
